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Scientific Interest(s):

Dr. Beth Jamieson's research focuses on the immune response to HIV-vaccination and natural infection.

Specifically, Jamieson investigates the HLA-B57 restricted CD8+ T-cell response to HIV to determine why most HIV-1 infected individuals that fail to progress to AIDS within 10 years are HLA-B57+ individuals. As CD8+ T-cells are class I restricted, this association between the class I antigen, HLA-B57, and the lack of disease progression, strongly argues for a role of CD8+ T-cells in determining rates of disease progression. This newly funded project is in the early stages of development.

In addition, Jamieson recently received National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to investigate and compare the immune response to HIV-1 in women and men. While women and men have been reported to progress to AIDS with similar rates, in the first 4.5 years of infection, women have been reported to have a HIV-1 RNA copies per ml of plasma that are a log lower than found in men. At approximately 4.5 years, the viral burden in women becomes similar to that found in men. As uninfected women and men exhibit several differences in general immune system parameters, it is possible that the early difference in viral burden is due to better immune control of HIV replication early in infection compared to men. Alternatively, women and men may have differences in target cell availability that influences viral replication in the first four years of infection. This is somewhat supported by the findings of others that women tend to have more diverse viral populations than men soon after infection. These possibilities are currently under investigation in Jamieson's laboratory.

Lastly, Jamieson's laboratory continues to study the role of the thymus in T-cell reconstitution in HIV infected individuals, extending her earlier findings that the thymus continues to function well into adulthood despite the earlier misconception that this organ ceased to generate new T-cells after puberty.